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Wunderman London CEO Mel Cruickshank says she wants agency to be 'creating brilliance' as it brings in Matt Batten as chief creative officer

“I want us to be creating brilliance,” Wunderman London’s CEO Mel Cruickshank has stated while discussing the hiring of Matt Batten to the agency’s most senior creative role.
Batten, who joins from Wunderman’s Melbourne office as chief creative officer, will report to both Cruickshank and EMEA chief creative office Wolfgang Haf when he begins on Monday (10 December).
“Our creative is good and we’re doing some great work and winning pitches such as EDF, but what I want us to be creating brilliance,” Cruickshank told The Drum. “With Matt – firstly he has awards and accolades, but has also done some fantastic work in Australia. With his digital skills as well, he has the ability to stretch across the depth of all of the companies that we have in the UK to bring us together better.”
Explaining what she wanted from Batten in terms of ‘working together’ she explained that he would have control of the creative teams within Wunderman London, as well as Burrows, Blast Radius and KBM Group, in an effort to bring the agencies creative closer.
“Matt absolutely wants to get involved in driving the business forward. He can help bring us together from a creative perspective, but also with the skillsets that he’s got he can help take us where we want to go to in the next three years,” she explained.
“Every agency has to be creativity, but you could argue that creativity doesn’t have to come from pure creative. That’s the game we’re in and we want to be a fantastic creative agency and from a strategy perspective as well we need to look at different ways of working. Creatively, we need to be up there.”
Cruikshank also revealed that she is currently searching for a chief strategy officer, a position she hoped would be filled by the end of the first quarter next year.